Trump and his aides behaved badly at Arlington National Cemetery

Donald Trump had no problem desecrating Arlington National Cemetery's Section 60 and the gravesite of a fallen soldier. No problem at all. And he has no problem with his henchmen shoving a cemetery staff member who tried to stop them.

Touring Arlington is an experience that will stay with you forever. The silence is deafening. When people do speak, it is with muted voices. The loudest sound you hear is the sound of a military salute or a cannon blast at a new burial.

It is a sacred place, a place of peace and reverence. There is no laughter or smiles and happy photos at loved one’s gravesites. Your one-time joy and happiness, the light of your life is buried there.

So to see what Trump did at Arlington, a thumbs-up photo op at a gravesite, with the fallen soldier’s family members acting as willing pawns, and an embarrassment to our country, has left me stunned and angry.

Are Trump’s supporters, members of the military and veterans, people who call themselves patriots willing to embrace this behavior?

I’m sorry to say, I believe many of them will.

Dawn Kristensen, Crystal Lake

Flagging concerns after a chuckle

Thanks for the belly laugh I had after reading the Page 5 caption of the Illinois flag photo in Thursday's Sun-Times: "... dates to 1915, though it was altered in 1970, when the word 'Illinois' was added." Including the state name is kinda obvious, huh?

Participation in a contest to design a new flag can be fine, but who would pay for all the unnecessary eventual replacements in town halls, color guards and more?

John McClelland, Evanston

Get rid of narrative that stereotypes Palestinians

I don’t have any reason to believe that Rich Miller is an imprecise writer, and his piece published last Sunday in the Sun-Times and on his website, Capitol Fax, makes an important point about the outdated narratives our political media relies on.

With that in mind, I do want to highlight one thing he wrote that I think should be reflected on: "But while antisemitism has been intensely ugly since last October, we hadn’t seen any truly violent protests, even though Cook County has more Palestinian Americans than any county in the nation.” I find it objectionable to imply that the many protests directed at America’s support for Israel are primarily motivated by antisemitism, especially when polling suggests that a plurality of Americans disapprove of the war and of Israeli leaders like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Political commentators have a responsibility to honestly engage with reasonable political viewpoints being expressed around these issues, and there are critiques of our government’s support for Israel that have nothing to do with antisemitism, which hadn’t been mentioned in the piece up to that point. It was also wrong for the piece to casually (and accidentally, I hope) imply that Palestinian Americans and other Arab Americans are inherently violent. It’s true that Cook County’s large Palestinian Arab population has every reason to oppose the government’s support for the war; it is not made at all clear in the piece why that would lead to violence, and we should be careful to not reinforce the false stereotype that either are naturally dangerous people.

I was at the marches last week because I believe our government’s support for Israel is extremist in nature, and that we should not militarily support states that fail to reflect the democratic and pluralist values we are fortunate enough to enjoy in our country, state and city. Many of the people who joined me were Palestinian American and Arab American, and their presence was not an inherent risk to anyone. I hope that future columns are more careful in how they characterize this issue and their neighbors.

Joel Thorson, Rogers Park

Driving home the notion of fewer cars

RTA Chairman Kirk Dillard is absolutely correct when he said in his recent letter that bus-only lanes on DuSable Lake Shore Drive our last chance to "prioritize the tens of thousands of daily bus riders who deserve faster, more reliable service."

But Dillard’s warning is incomplete: the stakes are bigger than the needs of those already riding CTA buses on the Drive. The true stakeholders are the additional tens of thousands of motorists who would switch from driving to bus-riding if only the buses were faster and arrived at each stop on time. But speed and punctuality cannot be achieved if the buses must compete for space with cars, as transportation experts Ashish Sen and Slim Soot wrote in a letter to the editor earlier this month. Only a separate right of way for buses will make public transit on the Drive faster, more punctual and more useful to commuters than driving.

The professional engineers planning the next generation of DuSable Lake Shore Drive improvements know this. But they were trained as highway engineers, not as total-mobility planners, and they are simply doing what they were taught: build more highways. Getting the highway engineers re-oriented to contemporary forms of transportation planning requires outside executive leadership. Mayor Brandon Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker need to send the DLSD planners an unequivocal message that while the automotive age is not over, the age of automotive hegemony is, and mass transit must be included in all major highway initiatives.

F.K. Plous, Lincoln Square